Feds Indict ‘47 Ronin' Director Who Scammed Netflix Out Of Millions For Never-Made TV Series
Federal prosecutors have indicted Carl Rinsch for allegedly ripping off Netflix for $11 million for a long promised sci-fi series that was never made.
In a case with Keanu Reeves cameos, some bad crypto deals, a pledge to be able to control lightening, five Rolls-Royces and a scathing portrait of an industry drunk on its own content needs, the 47 Ronin director is looking at likely the rest of his life behind bars if found guilty. 'Carl Rinsch allegedly stole more than $11 million from a prominent streaming platform to finance lavish purchases and personal investments instead of completing a promised television series,' FBI Assistant Director Leslie Backschies said Tuesday of Netflix a.k.a 'Streaming Company-1' in the 12-page indictment, as the indictment was made pubic. 'The FBI will continue to reel in any individual who seeks to defraud businesses.'
More from Deadline
'Adolescence' Leads Netflix TV Charts In Debut Week; 'Back In Action' Secures Spot On Most Popular Film List
'Sirens': Netflix Reveals Premiere Date, First-Look Images For Limited Series Starring Julianne Moore
Gabrielle Dennis & Michael Potts Join Courtney A. Kemp's Netflix Crime Drama 'Nemesis' As Series Regulars
Arrested today in L.A., the 47-year-old Rinsch is 'charged with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and five counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison,' according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York.
In ways that seem almost impossible to imagine in this era of leaner budgets, more streamlined needs and less production overall, Rinsch's alleged conduct and crimes would make a pretty good six-episode series on a streamer, or a Netflix True Crime documentary.
After burning through $44 million of the streamer's cash for 'White Horse' and holding final-cut power, Rinsch demanded another $11 million off the company in 2020. The director said the funds were for various and pre-and post-production' needs to complete the series., Having seen next to nothing since Cindy Holland scooped up White Horse, renamed Conquest, from Amazon in 2018 for over $61 million, Netflix gave the director the money with what one assumes was a hope and a prayer.
A year later, with absolutely nothing to show for it but aggravation, Netflix pulled the plug on the project. The streamer later wrote off over $55 million in costs. Netflix won a $12 million arbitration ruling against Rinsch last year after the filmmaker claimed that the company actually owned him $14 million. Rinsch doesn't seem to have paid up.
Before all this ended up in court, the filmmaker took Netflix's cash that had been deposited in a bank account in the name of the 'Rinsch Company' and moved it around to a variety of other accounts and locations. After a slew of bad market trades, Rinsch blew through around half the $11 million in less than a year. Regaling Netflix execs with tales that White Horse/Conquest was 'awesome and moving forward really well,' Rinsch then went on a spending spree.
The inventory put together by SDNY prosecutors and the Kash Patel-run FBI listed a real champagne tastes and caviar dreams mentality.
Rinsch used the money he had left 'to speculate on cryptocurrency, and on personal expenses and luxury items, including approximately $1,787,000 on credit card bills; approximately $1,073,000 on lawyers to sue Streaming Company-1 for even more money, and for lawyers related to his divorce; approximately $395,000 to stay at the Four Seasons hotel and at various luxury rental properties; approximately $3,787,000 on furniture and antiques, including approximately $638,000 to purchase two mattresses and approximately $295,000 on luxury bedding and linens; approximately $2,417,000 to purchase five Rolls-Royces and one Ferrari; and approximately $652,000 on watches and clothing.'
With Rinsch set to go before U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff Tuesday, Netflix had no comment on today's indictment when contacted by Deadline.
Best of Deadline
James Mangold's 'A Complete Unknown': Everything We Know About The Bob Dylan Biopic So Far
2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
Epic Universe: The Latest Images Of The New Universal Orlando Theme Park
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Buzz Feed
41 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
Squid Game Season 3 Original Ending
🚨MASSIVE 🚨 Spoilers follow for the end of Squid Game. The third and final season of the Netflix global smash Squid Game hit the streaming service this weekend — and there's a good chance you've already watched the whole thing, up until the shocking conclusion. Brief refresher, in case you somehow already forgot: In the final episode, the show's protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) decides to kill himself, effectively making the newborn daughter of Players 222 and 333 the winner of the competition — and, as the Front Man takes her to safety, the 45.6 billion won prize. Well, in a new interview with Variety, the show's creator Hwang Dong-hyuk says that the series almost ended way differently — and in much more shocking fashion, too. 'When I had a vague idea about what kind of story I wanted to tell through Seasons 2 and 3, I actually had a different ending in mind,' he said. 'And then as I went through the writing process, as I created my characters, as I laid out the foundation and the outline of the story, and as I drew out the map for Gi-hun's character arc, I realized, this shouldn't be the way this story ends — and this is a better ending, or the right ending, for this arc." "And so there was actually a very drastic change in the ending compared to when I just had only a vague idea about the story, and then when I really got into the writing process.' 'In the finale, Gi-hun makes a choice," Hwang added, "and originally, when I was just thinking about where the story was going to take me, it was actually the exact opposite choice.' Yikes. Does that going to kill a baby? Wild stuff, if so. You can read the rest of the interview right here.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
DOJ Delays Tower Dumps Appeal As Digital Privacy Battle Intensifies
Cellular communications tower for mobile phone and video data transmission The Department of Justice , or DOJ, has requested more time to decide whether to appeal a landmark federal court ruling that found "tower dumps"—a widely used law enforcement surveillance method—unconstitutional. This delay highlights the growing conflict between police surveillance tactics and the courts' increasing scrutiny of digital privacy, as reported by Court Watch News The Mississippi Ruling That Sparked a National Debate In February 2025, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Harris of the Southern District of Mississippi became the first federal judge to declare the use of tower dumps unconstitutional. The case stemmed from an FBI investigation into a violent gang suspected of a series of shootings and car thefts. Over fourteen months, federal agents sought four sealed search warrants to collect data from cellular towers at nine locations. Judge Harris denied the FBI's requests multiple times, even after the DOJ submitted clarifications and participated in a conference call to address his concerns. Harris wrote, "The Government is essentially asking the Court to allow it access to an entire haystack because it may contain a needle... The Fourth Amendment does not permit law enforcement to rummage through troves of data and themselves determine the existence of probable cause to support the seizure of that data." What Are Tower Dumps? Tower dumps are a powerful investigative tool. When a tower dump is requested, cellular carriers provide records of every device that connected to specific cell towers during a designated period. This data includes phone numbers, unique device identifiers, connection dates and times, duration of connections and the types of communications transmitted. The scale of these data collections can be enormous. In the "High Country Bandits" case from 2010, FBI agents investigating rural bank robberies obtained over 150,000 registered cell phone numbers from just four tower dumps. Only two of those numbers belonged to the actual suspects. In a more recent Massachusetts case, law enforcement obtained tower dump data covering tens of thousands of unique phone numbers to investigate a series of armed robberies. Legal Landscape: A Patchwork of Precedents The Mississippi ruling followed a significant decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2024, which found geofence warrants unconstitutional. Geofence warrants require companies like Google to provide location data for all devices in a specific area, casting a wide net to identify potential suspects. The Fifth Circuit's decision in United States v. Smith established that mass data collection techniques, which sweep up information about thousands of innocent people, are incompatible with the Fourth Amendment. Judge Harris's ruling extended this logic to tower dumps. Telecoms and the Scale of Surveillance Telecommunications companies, which process these massive data requests, have largely remained silent in the public debate. Internal documents and court filings reveal that major carriers have different data retention policies. AT&T retains call records, cell site, and tower dump data for seven years, while T-Mobile keeps similar information for only two years. The FBI's Cellular Analysis Survey Team, or CAST, supports thousands of investigations annually using tower dump analysis, with sophisticated tools for analyzing the vast datasets provided by telecoms. Privacy Advocates Sound the Alarm Privacy advocates argue that tower dumps represent a fundamental threat to constitutional protections. The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have warned that these surveillance techniques could be used to identify people at home in a neighborhood, protestors at a political rally, or congregants at a place of worship. Legal scholars emphasize that tower dumps amount to mass surveillance and allow police to obtain highly personal information about thousands of people unconnected to the offense under investigation. The DOJ's Legal Dilemma The DOJ's repeated requests for extensions highlight the stakes involved. After initially indicating in March that prosecutors would seek to "reverse or vacate" the Mississippi ruling, the DOJ's latest motion omits such language and simply requests more time to 'determine next steps'. This hesitation is notable, especially since tower dumps continue to be used by law enforcement agencies nationwide during the appeals process, including in high-profile investigations such as arson attacks against Tesla vehicles. The Prompt: Get the week's biggest AI news on the buzziest companies and boldest breakthroughs, in your Subscribed! You're Subscribed! What Comes Next? Legal experts predict that the conflicting circuit court decisions on digital surveillance warrants will likely force the Supreme Court to weigh in. The Court's 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which required warrants for long-term cell phone location tracking, has already begun to reshape digital privacy law. The outcome of the current legal battle will have significant implications for both law enforcement capabilities and individual privacy rights. The Bigger Picture: Surveillance in the Digital Age The tower dumps controversy is part of a broader reckoning with law enforcement's digital surveillance capabilities. Beyond geofence warrants and tower dumps, agencies use other mass data collection techniques, such as reverse keyword searches and social media monitoring. These tools have become increasingly sophisticated and widespread. The FBI's training materials show that cellular analysis now supports investigations ranging from terrorism cases to routine criminal matters. What began as an emergency measure in rare cases has become a standard investigative tool used thousands of times each year. Internationally, other countries have taken a more restrictive approach. Canadian courts, for example, require warrants based on reasonable and probable grounds and mandate that tower dumps be conducted in ways that minimize privacy intrusions for subscribers. As the DOJ continues to deliberate, the legal and technological landscape is still evolving. The current patchwork of conflicting decisions creates uncertainty for law enforcement agencies and privacy advocates alike. The resolution of this issue will likely require clear guidance from higher courts about the constitutional limits of mass digital surveillance. Until then, the tension between effective law enforcement and privacy protections will continue to play out in courtrooms across the country, with far-reaching implications for the future of digital privacy in America.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Meghan Markle rocks leg-lengthening mini shorts in stunning beach photo
The Duchess of Sussex solidified her style credentials at the weekend as she shared a stunning snapshot of herself running along the beach. The joyful image, which was shared to Instagram on Saturday, showed the former Suits actress looking ultra-chic in a monochromatic linen get-up comprising a pair of leg-lengthening mini shorts in white, an oversized, cream linen shirt and a pair of tan leather sandals. Meghan, 43, spruced up her beachy look with a wide-brim straw hat, dark sunglasses and a cluster of golden bangles. She had her raven locks swept away from her face, and appeared in her element as she strode away from the shoreline with a huge smile on her face. "That weekend feeling," she penned in her caption alongside the sun and musical note emojis. Over on her official As Ever Instagram page, meanwhile, the mother-of-two shared a glimpse inside her wholesome weekend plans. In a nod to her passion for foraging, the Duchess uploaded a picture of herself picking ripe fruit from a tree in her garden. Embracing the sunshine, Meghan could be seen wearing a simple white blouse and a straw hat embossed with the letter 'M'. In her caption, she wrote: "Weekend plans: pick, snack, repeat." Meghan launched her lifestyle brand earlier this year following the release of her Netflix show titled With Love, Meghan. As part of her brand's soft launch, the Duchess reportedly sent 50 jars of jam to the likes of fashion designer Tracy Robbins and polo player Nacho Figueras' wife Delfina Blaquier. A tagline on her brand's website reads: "What began with a small pot of fresh fruit preserves, bubbling away in my home kitchen, has inspired this curated collection to bring surprise and delight to your every day." Following the success of her initial product launches, Meghan has recently added an array of new items, including an apricot spread, honey and a rosé wine which is set for release on 1 July. "With soft notes of stone fruit, gentle minerality and a lasting finish, this bespoke blend is launching just in time for summer entertaining," a description for the rosé reads. In her recent podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, Meghan hinted that As Ever's direction would defy traditional marketing tactics often seen in luxury circles, including the now-commonplace "scarcity drop" approach. "I want to move away from that scarcity mentality," she explained. "I don't want you to eat that jam once every six months. I want that to be on your shelf all the time."
